


of fallen nobles

by vanitaslaughing



Series: darkest before dawn [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Soldiers, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 22:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18559171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: There were so many things he could have done. Could have simply turned around and ignored this. Could have pushed past them. Could have remained tall on his feet, with his head held high as Niffs generally did.Instead he reached for his weapon.Tossed it onto the ground. The clatter was deafeningly loud in this street of Lestallum as Loqi Tummelt, perhaps one of the most furiously proud Niffs around, got on his knees.





	of fallen nobles

**Author's Note:**

> CAN be read as a stand-alone. 
> 
> if you did read tu fui, ego eris; this one's last scene takes place a day after the scene between cor and loqi in chapter 12
> 
> please do note that the implied/referenced suicide concerns loqis father, and while not Described in Detail it does affect a lot of his way of thinking and crops up at two points.

He tried not to waver under the mercenary’s steely glare, but eventually he had to give in and averted his gaze. She was a commoner who only aligned herself with the highest bidder, something that many people chose these days but that very few excelled at. Those who failed at being mercenaries were often integrated into the army right away, but somehow Highwind and her crew not once got even remotely close to being anything but the best that money could buy. She was an impressive presence, oppressive even—mostly because the entire department were twenty-somethings who wanted to prove themselves worthy of receiving a promotion.

He on the other hand was the runt of the litter, some would say. Someone who in theory excelled but had not once seen field practice. Rather than running in head first in the last mission he had spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to get a lay of the land before taking out the escapees that he had accurately predicted being able to slip through the front lines. Daemons were just creatures of the night, yes, but that particular breed had been infamous for their ability to sneak past people.

Which, somehow, had gotten him to this point, standing face to face with the single most impressive woman in the empire, Aranea Highwind.

She was frowning, deeply so.

His department had been dispatched to take care of more escapees from Besithia’s labs. Something was definitely going haywire there if things were escaping, but before they had even arrived at their destination, Highwind and her mercenaries had intercepted their path.

“Okay, again from the top. Government dispatched you guys to take care of this, despite having hired us for it. So they’re expectin’ cooperation?”

“Yes.”

She crossed her arms. “So, we’re all after the same target. Might be hard to work with army blokes, but nothing we can’t handle as long as you can handle us. Fine. Care to tell me why they sent a teenager to talk this out with me again?”

Oh gods. She knew. She knew he was still underage and technically not supposed to be here. How did a mercenary know more about him than literally any other person in this forsaken part of the Niflheim army? “I’m not a teenager. And I suppose I was… promoted to department strategist without being told so?”

Of all people Aranea Highwind. She leaned in with her eyes narrowed. For heaven’s sake, she had been there when the empire had conquered what people called the Daemon Breeding Grounds! He’d been only a child back then! Hells, he still was a child. Legally. Not that he or the army cared about that; that was the hand that people who had fallen out of favour with Emperor Aldercapt were dealt.

“Mhm-hmm. Sure. Let’s go with that, strategist… what’d you say your name was again?”

She was making looking at her really hard. He pointedly kept his head turned away and his eyes on the ground. Nothing good ever came from people asking what his name was—they had all heard that story. Everyone in the empire had. The last thing he wanted was pity; he had only been a child back then as well. But somehow everyone took that as an opportunity to belittle him and what he achieved—after all, he was the son of a fallen noble house and the unfortunate first person to find the head of the house after he chose death over living in shame.

For a long moment he considered running away. The last thing he wanted on this mission was yet another person smiling at him with that belittling little smile they all had when he said his name. But running away right now when he had the chance to finally walk out of that heavy shadow that his father’s suicide had left on him and his life would have been wrong.

Thus he finally looked at the mercenary with what he hoped was a cold, steely glare that could rival hers.

“Tummelt, Commodore Highwind. Loqi Tummelt, brigadier infantry C94.” 

* * *

He was a failure of a footsoldier, but when it came to messing with machinery he was second to none. In theory he was fantastic, and used that to his advantage to rise through the ranks almost inhumanely quickly. But in the end he suffered from extreme inexperience with what this war was and how it was fought. Before he could even think about it too much, he found himself taken under the wings of a noble from a higher standing house.

He’d definitely heard the name Ulldor before. A family of many branches. A family of many excellent people—but allegedly none as excellent as Caligo Ulldor. What Loqi lacked in field experience the man quickly and almost brutally pointed out; on the other hand it seemed like he cared little for his impressive machine and Loqi found himself tinkering with it every so often. Many people avoided the man, and truth be told he would have quite liked to as well at times, but having grown up as member of a family that had fallen out of favour with the emperor he knew better than to stick his nose up around other imperials.

And so, even while nursing a broken nose, he messed with the engine. That thing had gone from just another state-issued commander engine to one of the top models in the entire army and not a single tech expert in all of Zegnautus Keep was able to replicate what he did to it properly. If only being an engineer wasn’t seen as a disgrace by the people who had eventually raised him after his mother died when he was ten.

It wasn’t like he could sink any lower. Noble with his own banner or no, he was the last living member of House Tummelt and by the very heavens themselves even if he killed King Regis of Lucis with his own bare hands he would still barely be more than another disgraced nuisance in the eyes of the empire he served and loved.

He jerked up and his head connected with the metal with a heavy clunk when he felt a hand on his lower back. He sunk to the ground with a whimper after that. Heavens, that hurt. As if someone had drilled into his skull on top of the broken nose.

“General Ulldor wishes to see you, Tummelt.”

Judging from the voice, one of the few children who actually worked in Zegnautus. They were convenient to have; fast on their feet and more reliable than forwarding a message via phone or something especially when someone wanted to contact someone else who kept their phone off when they were busy. People like Loqi.

He was more stuck on the fact that if things had gone differently, that brat would be addressing him as Lord Tummelt. Maybe they would start doing it once he turned eighteen in three months.

He doubted it.

“Got it. Thank you.” 

* * *

The first and only time he saw the Oracle was shortly after she was named Oracle—right around the time her brother started soaring through the ranks, bypassing entire chunks of army work with his ruthlessness. Ruthlessness and the fact that Ardyn Izunia definitely had a hand in this. That new General Fleuret was just a year older than Loqi, they were both sons of fallen noble houses. The exception was that outsiders stuck together. Whoever Ardyn Izunia truly was, the people loved him. And whoever he suggested usually was accepted with open arms. Hundreds of people with a talent for biology and engineering, all of them now under Besithia’s thumbs somewhere in the production facilities.

All things considered, Fleuret wasn’t that bad. Not a citizen of the empire, mind, but still a good choice for that particular vacant spot.

General Ulldor _hated_ Chancellor Izunia’s latest pet project, however. He was ranting and raving at every opportunity, and Loqi tried ignoring him for the most part by messing with his newest weapon. He barely even cared about when he heard his own name, something about honour and deserving things. He nodded along to when he went on one of his tangents about people not being born in the empire being nothing but savages who ought to know their places.

Savages, yeah. He agreed.

Of course, things changed when he saw that woman—no, the girl.

Much like he had been back at age fourteen when he stared into Aranea Highwind’s eyes, seventeen-year-old Oracle Lunafreya held her head surprisingly high while being escorted through Zegnautus Keep. Not high enough that it could be seen as arrogance, but high enough that it was clear that she had her pride and she would not bow her head to the people who had conquered her country. Her brother was a paragon of arrogance; she seemed elegantly defiant. _Radiant._

Heavens, if someone could read his thoughts, he would be executed for high treason on the spot. 

* * *

On second thought, Aranea herself had been a child when they had had conquered the last wilderness of Niflheim.

Why exactly that was his only thought as he lay there as still as possible so neither that thrice-accursed Cor Leonis nor the Prince of Lucis—King of Lucis, now that they had killed his father—thought he was still alive he had no idea. But through the muddled layers of intense, seething, searing and angry pain even as the sun set upon Lucis, all he could think about was the fact that they had all been children. Aranea, he himself, High Commander Nox Fleuret, the Oracle. Prince Noctis.

All of them children, all of them with certain skeletons in their closets. Or corpses dangling from the ceiling—

He let out a whimper.

It hurt. Every single bit of his body hurt. Broken bones he knew could mend. He had had them breaking and mending again since he joined the army as young as fourteen. Fourteen and staring at Aranea Highwind, staring death in the face as he watched those lab creations soar through the night skies. He memorised their numbers; he still knew them now.

For all the glory and grandeur of the empire, he sure had let it down again. No matter how much he impressed the higher ups, no matter how many damned times he excelled at everything and slowly but steadily regained his family honour; this time around there was no recovering from that if he lived. If he were lucky, he’d die in this place. Lying face first on the ground, with pain numbing him entirely and his senses fizzing out little by little. If only he could have managed to defeat Cor Leonis before he went down.

Loqi was unconscious by the time members of the army found him. 

* * *

Somewhere through the dull haze of pain, he remembered Caligo saying something about _beating_ the whereabouts of Prince Noctis out of some servants that he would inevitably find in Lestallum. Someone was going to die for this. A damned civilian was going to die, and Loqi was the only person who knew.

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t open his eyes. 

* * *

News about Altissia came back to the empire in pieces. The sun rose too late—he would know, having watched it as he recovered that much—and much too early, the day suddenly cut more than just simply in half. The first piece of information that reached him was that Lady Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, the Oracle, was dead and her remains had likely been washed away. The second part was that the High Commander was either dead or had deserted—Loqi figured it out be the latter as he reached for the tray with his shaky, bandaged hands.

The third was that King Noctis still lived. Altissia wasn’t entirely ruined, and someone had managed to save him.

Fourth, Zegnautus Keep came alive.

He licked his dry lips as he stared up at the keep. It had been eerily quiet for so long. Not a single member of his department ever answered his calls—only mailboxes left and right, every text was not even read. They had been on standby deployment inside the keep alongside a lot of other people. Every person who answered him had also been in a military hospital recovering from recent injuries, and they all told the same tale.

Zegnautus Keep was silent. The days were getting terrifyingly short.

It hadn’t even been a week. But somehow, Niflheim was stuck in a constant phase of gloom. Something between dusk and dawn, with long stretches of darkness between them.

Loqi Tummelt was, in theory, the highest-ranking member of the army in this particular hospital. With uncertain amounts of dread he noticed an airship approaching the keep at way too high speeds. That airship… belonged to the High Commander. Desertion.

With his voice surprisingly steady he demanded they seek shelter. Something was wrong. The Daemons were too strong. The Higher Commander should not be here. Zegnautus Keep should have remained quiet and unvisited, a silent threat looming above the very people who had caused the world to end like this.

The people followed his command. For the first time since he was a child, people respected his role as a noble and member of the army. He just very sincerely wished that it wouldn’t have been in a situation like this.

Or the situation after.

Thinking about it, he had never wanted to become a man covered in burn scars who still swayed on his feet whenever the stress became too much for his not recovered body to handle. But somehow Loqi found the strength to tell these once proud people that even their shelter was not the right place to stay. They had one last chance.

The members of the army agreed.

As long as the civilians were taken in, they would accept whatever trials and judgements the people of Lucis passed onto them. An execution for war crimes was something they would take with the same pride that they once marched under Niflheim’s banners for. As long as the civilians were safe. 

* * *

Once upon a time he would have approached this entire situation with indignation and unhealthy amounts of pride. Following that strange encounter of the other day that Cor Leonis had defused—of all people Cor Leonis—he had been thinking, however. Thinking enough that it followed him into his dreams, distorted his normal nightmares into something that almost felt surreal until he woke. He barely remembered what had happened, but his mood had gone from bad to worse.

Loqi had furiously shoved what he had gotten from his late mother’s room into the hands of the greenhouse district keepers. Flower seeds. That damned flowers his mother had loved so much she tried to breed it by herself. Offering nothing short of a furious explanation of what these things were, how exactly they were supposed to be handled and admitting that he himself had never managed to grow them, thus leading to the seeds being sort of a good luck charm to him, he then marched off, only to find a cluster of Glaives and Crownsguard together with their Marshal in his way.

Beside the man stood a kid he remembered from a report that Aranea had scornfully slapped onto the table in his makeshift home. Talcott Hester—the surviving victim of Caligo Ulldor’s mad plan to get information out of a servant to the Lucian crown. It was a group of no less than thirty-something Lucians and Accordans, all standing there, turning to look at him. And the kid looked _terrified._ Niffs terrified him—but army men like Loqi perhaps did even more so than the civilians.

This… was not a good situation to walk into. He could practically _feel_ the Glaives and members of the Crownsguard all bristle; it was absolutely no secret that Talcott’s story had touched many people. Loqi himself was still furious that he had been out of commission then—he of all people had known about this madness, but he had been unable to stop it.

There were so many things he could have done. Could have simply turned around and ignored this. Could have pushed past them. Could have remained tall on his feet, with his head held high as Niffs generally did.

Instead he reached for his weapon.

Tossed it onto the ground. The clatter was deafeningly loud in this street of Lestallum as Loqi Tummelt, perhaps one of the most furiously proud Niffs around, got on his knees. Much like every other of his countrymen Loqi was not a devout of any sort. The gods were nothing but bedtime stories, another conquest in recent times to him, but he knew how vulnerable people made themselves by bowing as if in deep prayer. He locked his gaze onto the ground.

“There are countless things I regret. Countless things I dare not ask understanding for. It would be foolish to beg you all for forgiveness considering all I did under my country’s banners without thinking twice about anything but the supposed honour I could regain. I considered my pride more valuable than most human lives. But if there is one thing I truly, absolutely abhor… then it is the fact that my actions saw me incapable of stopping Caligo Ulldor. I should have simply ignored you and the royal retinue at the Norduscaen Blockade, Marshal Leonis. I should have turned and gone to make certain that man never went to Lestallum. Should have made certain the man came with me so we would be both out of commission. But I did not. I count that amongst the gravest of my failures—not as soldier, but as person.” He exhaled slowly, deflating as he sat there on his knees with his trusty weapon too far for him to reach. “I’m sorry. I could have stopped him. I did not.”

A murmur went through the group, but Loqi did not look up. He didn’t want their forgiveness—he only wanted them to _understand._

“Could you… really have stopped him, though?” Talcott Hester’s voice was surprisingly steady for a kid that sounded like he was about to burst into tears. “Sometimes… sometimes you think you can, but you can’t.” A deep, shaky inhale. “You Niffs, you aren’t… at all as I imagined you would be. Miss Aranea put down flowers and promised me she’d do everything in her power to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. Mister Biggs and Mister Wedge make sure that everyone’s in one piece just as much as Lord Amicitia does. I thought… you were all monsters. Like that man and the MTs. You said you’re not asking me to forgive you, but… I would. If you wanted me to. We’re all… stuck in the dark together. We might as well try to understand each other.”

Loqi looked up. The kid was _crying._ Yet, somehow, he was also smiling.

A stark contrast to a kid he barely remembered—a kid who stood there completely expressionless as the servants screamed and his mother pulled him into a crushing embrace all but sobbing his name.

He opened his mouth, closed it again. He was aware of how stupid he must have looked, especially when after a moment he realised there was a tear running down his face as well.

“The others maybe deserve that but—“

It was Cor Leonis, of all people the man he hated most, who silenced him by getting down on one knee and offering Loqi a hand. “Kid’s got a point, General Tummelt. Whether you could have stopped Caligo Ulldor or not, you cannot change the past. We are stuck in this sinking ship together—us Lucians, the Accordans, the Tenebraens and you Niffs. You’ve far from earned our unwavering trust or our forgiveness for what your country and your inaction or action did. But why not start earning it now that King Noctis has accepted you into Lestallum?”

For a long moment, it was quiet in the street. Talcott sniffled and one of the Glaives took a step forward so the kid could lean against her if he needed to. The rest of the people were all silently looking at the scene up ahead—but not in a judging way. They were waiting for his choice.

He was outnumbered. If he really wanted to he could demand they drag him and every member of the army in front of a jury, could demand his own execution. Suddenly he was wildly aware of what they were expecting out of Brigadier General Loqi Tummelt, young strategist genius who became a menace on the battlefield once he finished modifying his personal engine. They expected the indignation and pride out of him that he had displayed at age 14, shortly before Tenebrae fell, as he talked to a young mercenary called Aranea Highwind.

He took the hand Cor offered him. He did not like the man. He would never like the man. But he was right—they were in the same boat.

Brigadier General Loqi Tummelt and his entire department had died in Zegnautus Keep like the rest of the Niflheim army. The person who had arrived here was yet another person seeking shelter from the dark, someone who could use their skills to help Lestallum fortify against the Daemons that Niflheim had helped unleash upon the world. It was the least he could do, and perhaps he could earn their trust and understanding that way. Whether he succeeded with that was entirely up to him—something that Ravus and Aranea had realised, a lesson that Loqi had long been due to learn himself.

The man Cor Leonis pulled back to his feet that day under the sunless skies of Eos was not the Brigadier Officer. It wasn’t a Glaive either.

It was just the Niff noble Loqi Tummelt who had a hand for machinery.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and the Glaives let him pass. “I won’t betray that trust you put in me and my people. Not again.”


End file.
